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Fiction: Seventy Two Virgins by Boris Johnson

REVIEWED BY ROLAND WHITE

October 3 2004, 1:00am, The Sunday Times

HarperCollins £17.99 pp326

If Boris Johnson is one day careless enough to lose however many jobs it is he has accumulated, he could have a brilliant future as an evil genius. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him sitting in the editor’s chair at The Spectator stroking a white cat.

At the centre of his first novel, a light comedy, is a terrorist plot of frightening ingenuity. The attack on the American president as he addresses the British parliament depends on some unlikely mistakes, a good deal of human error, outrageous bits of luck and coincidence, and plenty of bluff.

But don’t they all?

The comedy is reminiscent of Tom Sharpe, apart from one strand which seems to have been lifted straight from…

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